How was my day? Well, since you asked…

I wrote a story last week about Pete and Judi Dawkins putting their Rumson estate on the market for what by most accounts is a Monmouth County record $29.9 million. I tried to keep it light-hearted, you know, oh let me grab my checkbook and put in an offer, blah, blah, blah. The type of story you talk about with your friends in the beauty parlor, and so on. It ran on the front page Friday, and, well, let’s just say, the sea, my friends, was angry that day.

The day unfolded like this.

8:30 a.m. Get into the office to finish a story about TD Bank that is now 15 hours past my deadline.

9 a.m. Phone rings. It’s Kathy. I’ve been in contact with the Toms River resident for a few months now because she is getting foreclosed on. Due to be evicted April 14. “I figured you’d be out making a bid on that Rumson house,” she jokes.

9:30 a.m. Labor Department reports U.S. lost 36,000 jobs in February, bringing the total number of job losses to 8.4 million since December 2007. Of course, last February, the nation lost 726,000 jobs, so this month’s report is downright sparkling.

10:36 a.m. Reader from Highlands sends an e-mail. In short, it says putting the Rumson story on the front page is immoral, and it shows the staff is disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in the everyday lives of its residents. “Cancel my subscription,” she says.

12 p.m. Finish TD Bank story.

12:30 p.m. Asbury Park resident calls, sure that Direct TV has taken $600 out of her grandmother’s bank account without authorization. Now her grandmother can’t afford even her utility bill.

12:45 p.m. Lunch. I have a tuna hoagie, pretzels and water.

1:30 p.m.- 4 p.m. Track down a story about residents who paid their delinquent state taxes through New Jersey’s tax amnesty program, but still got letters this year saying they owed back taxes. A government screw up? That’s always good for a few Web hits.

4:07 p.m. Peter from Manalapan calls. He’s miffed that a local massage business has what looks to be a homeless guy out front holding a sign to drum up customers, kind of like the old days when kids would hold signs touting housing developments. He said the company told him it paid the guy to do tricks with the sign, which didn’t sit well with him. What has happened to this world, he wonders.

4:20 p.m. Peter continues. He has been unemployed for 15 months, and it is causing a strain in all parts of his life. He urges me to do a story about the law that allows employers to fire workers for any reason that’s not discriminatory whether it is reasonable or not.

4:30 p.m. I type as fast as I can as Peter says: “I wouldn’t say i’m getting by and i can’t even tell you the mental and emotional and how you know i became mr. mom at home and how hard its been for me becasue i’ve never had to look like this for a job. i have incredible creditials in teh industyr and i can’t get arrested, let alone a job.”

4:40 p.m. The message light on my telephone is blinking. I can’t bear to listen.

4:41 p.m. It’s from someone named Steve. He has a house for sale that he says is “ridiculously overpriced” and he wants a front-page story written about it too, because, he says, it is only fair. Again, he says, his name is Steve and he wants a story written about his ridiculously overpriced home.

Saturday morning: I have time to decompress and, truthfully, I’m pretty unsettled. And I wonder if I should have handled that story differently. Less breezy. More serious. A metaphor for the Wall Street versus Main Street fight? I don’t know. Let’s just use it as another example of our bid to chronicle the life and times of living at the Shore.

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About Michael Diamond

Michael L. Diamond is a business writer at the Asbury Park Press, covering workforce and the economy. He worked at newspapers in Pennsylvania and California before joining the Press in 1999.

5 Responses to How was my day? Well, since you asked…

I had no problem with the story of the Rumson house, and I’m dirt poor. I just thought it was kind of intersting. It’s not like we don’t know that homes like that exist. Millions of people watch MTV Cribs for the same entertainment.

Your story was written fine. Any one of us can list our own houses for $29.9 Million or even $299.9 Billion if we want. It doesn’t mean that will sell for that, or that the owner is in his right mind for thinking its worth that. I read it, got a chuckle, and I’m sure many others did too. If people read a story like that and want to cancel their subscriptions, they’re reading way too much into their tea leaves and projecting their own personal slants into an innocuous story.

Any new developments on that Rumson house? It’s been on the market a year, now.

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Michael DiamondMichael L. Diamond is a business writer at the Asbury Park Press, covering workforce and the economy. He worked at newspapers in Pennsylvania and California before joining the Press in 1999.E-mail Michael